About the IAPP

Dr Rebekah McWhirter is an associate professor in health law and ethics in the School of Medicine. Her research interests include ethical and legal issues in health and health research, Indigenous genetics, and empirical research methods in ethical and legal research. She completed her PhD at the University of Tasmania on the history of compulsory vaccination legislation, and has a MSc in Public Health Research from the University of Edinburgh, investigating genetic risk factors for multiple sclerosis in the Orkney and Shetland Islands.

After working at the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin and the Menzies Institute for Medical Research on a range of cancer genetics projects, Rebekah joined the Centre for Law and Genetics, and retrained in law at the University of Melbourne and the ANU. Her work now brings together her multidisciplinary experiences to focus on how the law can be used to improve public health and health research.